The Anatomy of a Remix

When Jive Records recently hired Nick “Piklz” Ditri and Danny “Danger” Boselovic, aka The Disco Fries, to remix “OMG” by Usher and Will i.am., the Fries emerged from the kitchen and broke down their process for DJ Times.

“In this remix, rather than doing long, extended breakdowns, we opted to stick closer to the original song structure, so our track would be instantly recognizable by new listeners familiar with the original. Depending on what purpose you are trying to serve with your mix, this may or may not be the best way to go and, ultimately, it depends on your audience. We were looking to keep it very mainstream and retaining the arrangement was one way in achieving that.

“As we kept the arrangement very simple, we wanted to make sure this remix still had the Disco Fries signature on it. We believe we accomplished that goal through our choice of sounds. We pulled out a few presets from our library that we are constantly adding to and crafted some new ones, including a gritty dubstep wobble bass to give the breakdown leading into the last hook some character. While we are by no means taking credit for this kind of sound, we put our own twist on this trend of the moment and knew when to use it to make our track interesting and stand out.

“One of the most important steps in our productions plays its role the minute we open a new project. Like many producers, we have taken the time to create a custom project template that allows us to always start with a familiar layout. Our template includes a number of bus routings and our mastering chain on the main output. It may work for some to include custom drum kits if you find you’re always pulling up the same samples or auxiliary return tracks loaded with reverb, delays, etc., if you want to save time.”